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Futaleufu Partners

At a Glance

The cap-table seat you want if mentorship is the bottleneck you fear most; the trade is access, since staying small is the whole point.

Pricing
Custom Pricing, Investment terms, not fees: search-fund economics per the model's conventions; nothing is published.
Best For
Traditional searchers who want the model's deepest operating mentorship on the cap table and accept a deliberately small, selective fund to get it
Track Record
Founded by the man who raised the model's third search fund and helped create Stanford's first search-fund course with three colleagues. Its limited partners are seventeen former operators, three operating partners sit on its team, and its references page pairs seventy people with forty-nine companies and dates none of them.
Its walking-the-talk page says its entrepreneurs buy companies at a rate fifteen percent above the average, a figure of the firm's own making with no base named. The page it now calls references lists each entrepreneur beside one company and no year; no count of searchers backed or capital raised appears anywhere. Read at: Home, team, walking the talk, musings, the references page that was the investments page, and the contact form.
Lane
Traditional
Funds
The search phase and the deal
Based
Los Gatos, California.
Invests
No investing scope on the pages this review read, so ask whether it will look at a search where you are.
Buys
A front page and an investments list pairing searchers with companies, which is evidence of activity. Its Walking the Talk essay is about the firm's own posture and names no size, sector or structure it will fund.
Before A First Call
A front page and an investments list pairing searchers with the companies they bought, under an invitation to send a message that asks for nothing in it.
First-Time Operators
An investments list pairing searchers with the companies they bought. The pairing is the whole of what it publishes about them.
How Long The Search Runs
No length on the search and nothing about what happens if it ends without a deal, on the pages this review read. Ask what the clock is before you sign anything.
Published Terms
No check size, stake or fee on the pages this review read. Most firms on this shelf publish none, so ask early rather than late.
What A Searcher Gets
Not published on the pages this review read. It is the figure a searcher most wants and most of this shelf does not print it, so ask before the first call rather than after.
After The Close
Pairs a new CEO with an operating mentor for regular one-on-one sessions through the first year, and joins the board when asked.
Roadmap Stages
1. Learn & Choose Your Path3. Set Up & Fund the Search

Deals It Has Backed

Purchases this firm's own pages evidence, from the Search Acquisitions Record. Not a portfolio: a deal joins that record only when two independent parties have published enough to verify it, so this is the part of the firm's work that can be checked rather than all of it.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • The founder helped invent the model and raised its third search fund
  • Seventeen operator-LPs are recruited specifically to mentor and join boards
  • CEO Boot Camp, a searching webinar series, and a CEO accelerator come with the check

Cons

  • Deliberately few deals a year, so selectivity is the product and access is the constraint
  • Terms and check sizes are not published
  • A mentorship-first pitch is hard to weigh from outside until you are in the room

What Searchers Say

Active searchers routinely list the firm on their investor pages, and the founder's course material and books are staples of the searcher canon.

How to Approach

Firms do not publish a term sheet you can prepare against, so this is how traditional (investor-backed) search capital comes in, what it weighs, and how to arrive ready.

The Typical Arc

  1. A first conversation on your background and why search, before any deal.
  2. A deep dive on your plan: industries, criteria, and how you will source.
  3. Backing for the search itself, then a fresh underwrite when you bring a live deal.
  4. A board seat and governance once you close.

What It Weighs

  • Whether you will finish a two-year search, not only start one.
  • The quality of your thesis and target criteria.
  • How you will behave on a cap table over a long hold.

How to Prepare

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